Ken Watanabe: Japan's Rising Son

One of the few Japanese actors to forge a truly international career, the unflappable Ken Watanabe is now treading the boards of London’s Palladium theatre where he is reprising the role of the King of Siam in The King & I. The Rake recently caught up with him to talk samurai warriors, tragic heroes, and the art of acting…

Ken Watanabe in the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha, proving he knows his way around a cream linen DB suit (Photo 12 / Alamy Stock Photo)

To most of us, well myself at
least, Ken Watanabe’s award-winning career is rather like an
iceberg: one recognises him from the few films at the tip of it,
such asThe Last
Samurai,Letters From Iowo Jima, Memoirs of a Geisha and more
recently, Christopher Nolan's Inception, but beneath the
surface lies a significantly large mass of work that one
occasionally bumps into, only the encounter tends to leave you with
an uplifting feeling, rather than a sinking one. One could perhaps
be forgiven for thinking Watanabe had come to acting later in life,
jumping straight into roles depicting sage men and wise warriors,
but not a bit of it. Watanabe’s career actually started shortly
after he graduated from high school in 1978, when he moved from
Koide, a small ski resort town in the Niigata Prefecture, to Tokyo,
where his aim was to join the Musashino Academia Musicae. However,
due to the ill health of his father, which resulted in an inability
to pay the fees for the prestigious music college, Watanabe changed
creative tack, segueing into acting by way of a theatre troupe
called ‘En’. Playing strong hero roles, he quickly began to make a
name for himself, drawing the eye of TV executives. He subsequently
made his TV debut in ‘Unknown Rebellion’, and shortly after took on a role as a
samurai, something he would become familiar with over his long and
storied career.

“Although I am probably best
known for my samurai roles, in reality, they do not even account
for a third of my films,” says Watanabe. “Besides picking up
swordsmanship skills, I have enjoyed playing the many tragic
endings for my characters. I think two-thirds of them have ended in
deaths and three were death by poison!”

Film-goers in the west will
almost certainly best remember Watanabe as the warriorLord Moritsugu Katsumoto in the
2003 epic period war drama,The Last Samurai, starring and co-produced by Tom Cruise. While
it was perhaps an overly idealistic portrayal of Japan’s samurai
tradition, Watanabe nonetheless played the tragic hero figure with
aplomb, earning himself nominations for the best-supporting-actor
at the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and Golden
Globes.

“But you know, I started my
career as a stage actor and have played so many types of roles, but
the samurai ones tend to stick with people,” says Watanabe. “In an
age where CGI can create any kind of setting and background, I
realised that live performance is a form where people can be moved
in an unwavering way. The performers and the audience share
the same air, so they feel the same vibrations, and this helps them
to connect as one.”

Indeed, Watanabe returned to his
stage acting roots in 2015, when he took on the all-singing, all
dancing role of the King of Siam in Rodgers &
Hammerstein’sThe King
& Ion Broadway, New
York, and this summer reprises the role alongsideKelli O’Haraduring a run at London’s Palladium
Theatre.

“The first time I came
uponThe King and
Iwas during my
childhood when I watched the movie,” says Watanabe. “But after
receiving the offer to play the king on stage, I watched all
ofThe King and
Imovies I could find.
Bart Sher, who directed the musical, explained the meaning and the
importance of doing this musical today: In modern society where
information is widely and easily accessible, people are becoming
more inward thinking and more hostile towards cultures and
languages that are foreign to them. In this sense, I feel that the
struggles of this 19th-century king are still relevant today - how
to deal with outside political pressure, how to accept it, how to
protect the country's history and culture. When I play this
role, I imagine both the happiness and the struggles of governing a
unique country that is a kingdom. One of the things that I’ve
enjoyed the most about it is that Bart’s version of the musical is
filled with love and humour that is close to what Rodgers &
Hammerstein initially intended.”

It’s clear from his samurai
roles that Watanabe is able to translate brooding intensity into a
physical language by way of breathtakingly dynamic sword-fighting
scenes. It may be the measure of a good choreographer that an
audience is unable to tell that the dance has indeed been
choreographed, but that suspension of disbelief takes an actor like
Watanabe to be powerful, dynamic and elegant all at once. On film,
much of this magic can be cleverly conjured up on cutting floor,
but live on stage is an altogether more difficult task, especially
when dancing is involved:

“Actually, the only time I dance
inThe King &
Iis during the 'Shall
We Dance' scene. It is a very emotional and ephemeral moment
where Anna and the King’s feelings become one, but the ending is
sad. In a sense, it is the pinnacle of this story, so I pour all my
heart into performing the scene. I think having good musical sense
definitely helps for dancing but also the delivery of words.
Having good timing is all about the beats in between
dialogue. And pitch is key to humour.”

But about that iceberg I was
speaking of earlier, specifically the submerged portion. Recently
Watanabe has taken on roles as diverse as the voices of a canine
head surgeon in Wes
Anderson’sIsle of Dogs; a Transformer named Drift; and in 2019 will
hit the big screen as a Japanese opera lover caught in a hostage
situation (Bel Canto), and a Gaia theory espousing scientist
inGodzilla: King of the
Monsters. Far from being
pigeonholed, Watanabe seems intent on rewriting his own script. “I
pour my heart into all of my roles, so I cannot compare them. I
always hope that the next project will turn out to be my best
work.” If that’s the case, then the sky’s the limit for Japan’s
favourite rising son.

The King and I runs at the London Palladium
from June 21 until September
29. For more information please visit
www.kingandimusical.co.uk.